Archive for the ‘Press Releases’ Category

Gothenburg, Sweden: New research from the analyst firm Berg Insight says that the worldwide installed base of smart electricity meters will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 26.6 percent between 2010 and 2016 to reach 602.7 million at the end of the period. During the next five years, penetration rates for smart metering technology are projected to increase from around 15–25 percent today to around 50 percent in Europe and North America and over 75 percent in Asia-Pacific. By 2020, penetration rates are expected to approach 100 percent in most developed countries with massive rollouts also taking place in new territories such as Latin America, India and the Middle East.

“Securing a sustainable supply of energy will be one of the greatest challenges for mankind in the 21st century”, said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst, Berg Insight and author of the report. “Smart grid technologies will make a major contribution to achieving this goal by improving the efficiency at all levels of the electricity supply chain from generation to transmission, distribution and consumption. Smart meters are the gateways that connect consumers to the smart grid and enable them to interact with other players in the ecosystem.”

Berg Insight ranks Europe and North America as the most advanced adopters of smart metering technology today. A majority of the countries in Western Europe have passed legislation that requires nationwide rollouts before the end of this decade and a few such as Italy and Sweden already have fully operational systems. All EU member states that have not already done so are required to perform a cost-benefit analysis of smart metering before September 2012. In the US, important states such as California and Texas have mandated the introduction of smart meters or given their approval for massive rollouts proposed by utilities. Furthermore the federal government has granted nearly US$ 5 billion in funding for smart grid projects that frequently involve smart meter rollouts.

China and other countries in East Asia are in an early phase of adoption but have very aggressive installation plans. The State Grid Corporation of China is currently deploying 50–60 million advanced electricity meters per year as preparation for the construction of a nationwide smart metering network within five years. The new generation of meters is prepared for two-way communication once a network connection becomes available. Elsewhere in the region, South Korea has an ambitious plan for a nationwide smart grid network that is being implemented by the national utility KEPCO and in Japan the government is looking to smart meters as a part of the solution to the new challenges facing the country’s electricity industry.

Download report brochure: Smart Metering – World 2011

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91
Twitter: www.twitter.com/berginsight

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to new a research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the installed base of smart electricity meters in North America will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22.5 percent between 2010 and 2016 to reach 87.4 million at the end of the period. Over the next five years, smart meter penetration among residential electricity customers in the US and Canada is projected to increase from around 20 percent in mid-2011 to more than 50 percent by the end of 2016. Berg Insight anticipates the region will have close to 100 percent penetration by 2020.

“North America has been at the forefront of metering innovation for many decades and is now embracing the latest smart technologies that improve grid performance”, said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst, Berg Insight and author of the report. “The US federal government and many states have successfully stimulated the demand for smart metering solutions through a combination of financial incentives and regulatory requirements. Full-scale rollouts are now underway at nearly half of the largest investor-owned utilities, as well as among hundreds of municipals and electric cooperatives.” California and Texas have passed legislation that require smart meters for all electricity customers and regulators in other major states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Georgia have given their approval for smart meter plans proposed by utilities. In Canada, Ontario completed the first major rollout of smart meters in early 2011 and new projects now underway in British Columbia and Québec are set to boost the penetration for smart metering in the country to around two-thirds of the households.

According to the report, wireless mesh networking technologies dominate the smart meter communication marketplace in North America. Most of the leading vendors provide solutions that use the license-free 900 MHz frequency band. Alternative technologies such as cellular networks and power-line carrier are however starting to gain more traction. TNMP, an electric utility with 230,000 customers in Texas, will deploy the first large-scale smart metering system in the US using point-to-point GPRS communication until 2016.

Download report brochure: Smart Metering in North America and Asia-Pacific

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91
Twitter: www.twitter.com/berginsight

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of mobile application downloads worldwide will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 56.6 percent between 2010 and 2015 to reach 98 billion at the end of the period. Berg Insight estimates that revenues from paid applications, in-app purchases and subscription services – so called direct revenues – reached € 1.6 billion in 2010. Berg Insight forecasts direct app store revenues to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 40.7 percent to reach € 8.8 billion in 2015. Apple’s iOS is the current leader in direct monetisation of mobile applications and will keep the number one position during the forecast period. The Android and Windows Phone operating systems are anticipated to be number two and three respectively in 2015.

“Even though the download numbers will increase during the forecast period, most apps are free to download and app monetisation will be a challenge for developers”, said Johan Svanberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “Free to download monetisation strategies such as in-app advertising and in-app purchasing will be increasingly important. This is especially true in the APAC region, which will account for over 40 percent of all mobile app downloads in 2015.” He adds that for the next coming years, the native mobile app is here to stay. New web technologies such as HTML5 are promising and will eventually be relevant alternatives to native apps. It is also important to remember that web apps and native apps are not mutual exclusives and publishers looking for maximizing reach should develop for the web as well as for the major mobile platforms.

Download report brochure: The Mobile Application Market

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91
Twitter: www.twitter.com/berginsight

Junifer Systems, the global provider of leading back office billing solutions for the utility industry, has been selected after a competitive tendering process to provide its flagship Utility Billing system to one of the largest electricity and gas distribution companies in New Zealand.

The Junifer Utility CIS system is a modular end to end customer management and billing system designed specifically to support the unique challenges encountered by both legacy utility systems and the new requirements resulting from the industry wide Smart Grid rollout programmes.

The unique framework underpinning the system enables specific and complex business requirements to be delivered in short timescales. The ease of use and adaptability of the software ensures that the end customer accrues a quick return on investment and gets a ‘best of breed’ solution to support current and future billing requirements.

The Junifer system will interface with 3rd party systems using web services to provide day state management and consumption data. Bill processes and calculations will be streamlined and optimised so that bill production time is reduced from days to a matter of hours.

The deployment will initially focus on electricity GXP and gas installation billing, with electricity installation billing to follow soon after.

Saul Nurtman, Managing Director for Junifer Systems said:

“The selection of Junifer Systems by such a well established company as Powerco to provide an integral component of their business systems represents an endorsement of the Junifer Utility CIS platform in the utilities industry. We are very excited about this opportunity and also the potential to grow the business in the Asia Pacific region”

Dave Hill, Programme Manager for Powerco said

“The flexibility of the Junifer product was a major factor in our solution selection process. With multiple utility types, and regional variations to billing rules, the ability to adapt the solution to quite complex billing requirements was essential. The Junifer team were highly responsive to evolving requirements, and added a lot of value to the process of process definition”.

About Powerco
Powerco is New Zealand’s second largest electricity and gas distribution company. Their network area spreads across the upper central and lower central North Island servicing approximately 420,000 consumers representing 46% of gas connections and 16% of electricity connections in New Zealand.

About Junifer Systems
Headquartered in London, Junifer Systems provides complete Customer Information Systems (CIS) to the utility industry, specialising in billing systems for Smart Meter deployments.
For more details please visit www.junifersystems.com

Media Contact:
Lindsay Spencer
Tria Nomina
T: +44 (0) 870 850 2157
E: lindsay.spencer@trianomina.com

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, HSPA/LTE accounted for 20.6 percent of the total number of broadband connections in Europe at the end of 2010. The number of HSPA/LTE mobile broadband subscribers (connected PCs and tablets) grew by 33 percent year-on-year in 2010 to reach 33.9 million and is forecasted to continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.9 percent to 96 million by 2016. The North American market has so far evolved at a slower pace, with mobile broadband accounting for just 13.2 percent of the total number of connections. Between 2010 and 2016, the North American market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 25.8 percent to reach 58 million subscribers at the end of the period.

The levels of adoption of mobile broadband vary significantly across Europe. “Austria is the most advanced market with a penetration rate of over 20 percent, corresponding to 46 percent of all broadband connections in the country. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Ireland and Portugal also have penetration rates above 10 percent. Belgium, Switzerland and Greece have on the other hand penetration rates of less than 3 percent”, said Lars Kurkinen, Telecom Analyst, Berg Insight. Also the pricing varies across different markets, with subscriptions costing around four times more in the most expensive countries compared to the least expensive ones. The lowest prices can be found in the Baltic countries, Poland and Austria with average monthly prices ranging € 8–11 for a 3 GB bundle at a data rate of at least 3.6 Mbps. The highest prices can be found in Switzerland and Spain (€ 40 per month).

Huawei has established itself as the world’s largest supplier of mobile broadband terminals holding a market share of 49 percent and has a particularly strong foothold in Europe. ZTE is the second largest vendor with clear margins capturing a market share of 31 percent. Berg Insight estimates the total global number of shipped external mobile broadband devices in 2010 to 92.7 million, with Europe and North America accounting for 27.4 million units and 8.5 million units respectively. In addition, shipments of embedded modules reached an estimated 9.5 million units. Two of the largest telecom vendors – Ericsson and Qualcomm – entered the market for embedded solutions in 2008 and have managed to sign contracts with many of the major notebook vendors. The two companies captured a market share of 83 percent together on this market in 2010.

Download report brochure: The Mobile Broadband Connectivity Market

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91
Twitter: www.twitter.com/berginsight

Gothenburg, Sweden – July 12, 2011: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the installed base of smart electricity meters in Europe will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.4 percent between 2010 and 2016 to reach 130.5 million at the end of the period. Annual investments in smart metering technology are forecasted to exceed € 3 billion by the mid-2010s. Smart meters help consumers better manage their energy usage and create financial incentives for energy savings. Moreover they constitute the core building blocks in future smart grids that will support electric vehicle charging, renewable micro-generation and advanced energy conservation.

Following major rollouts in Italy and the Nordic region, smart meters are now being introduced on a massive scale in Spain, France and the UK. “Endesa has commenced with a rollout to 12.9 million customers in Spain and the second largest electricity network operator Iberdrola will follow”, said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst, Berg Insight. “ERDF is awaiting formal approval from the government for a nationwide rollout to 33 million customers in France and in the UK the leading energy suppliers British Gas and E.ON have committed to the deployment of several million smart meters prior to the start of a mass rollout in 2014. By that time there will also be massive installations in additional countries such as the Netherlands, Ireland and Norway”.

For the first time, there are also plans for major smart metering projects in Central Eastern Europe. CEZ in the Czech Republic and Energa in Poland have announced large scale pilots as the first step towards full-scale installations. Energa has the most advanced plan to achieve full coverage for smart meters among its 3 million electricity customers by 2017.

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91
Twitter: www.twitter.com/berginsight

Gothenburg, Sweden – July 1, 2011: According to a new research report by Berg Insight, the number of new smart home installations worldwide was 0.44 million in 2010. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 65 percent, this number is expected to reach 5.38 million by 2015. The total revenues will simultaneously grow at a CAGR of 32.8 percent from US$ 2.3 billion in 2010 to almost US$ 9.5 billion in 2015.

Smart homes and connected home technologies have been around for decades, but up till recently, this has been a niche segment either for the very affluent or extreme technophiles. “Things are changing for this industry due to a perfect confluence of market, regulatory, strategic and technology trends”, according to the report’s lead analyst Alan A. Varghese. “First is the pull from consumers in the mobile age, who desire to use products such as iPhones and iPads to control their lifestyles through user-friendly interfaces. The regulatory drivers come from governments, whereby countries and utilities are mandated to better control the generation, distribution and consumption of power in residences. The strategic push comes from new entrants such as broadband providers who are already inside consumers’ homes and are looking for the next opportunities to increase ARPU, reduce churn and become complete solution providers. Finally the technology piece is coming together with increasing focus on interoperability, even as the cost of modules, chipsets, and software is trending down”, says Varghese.

There is an increasing shift in smart home technology adoption from custom and luxury residences to mainstream and production homes. Whereas only 0.1 percent of mainstream homes had any form of automation in 2010, almost 4 percent will have that by 2015. Furthermore, since new housing construction is in a slump worldwide, vendors are focusing their attention on retrofit of existing housing stock, and easy-to-deploy technologies such as wireless. Berg Insight finds that this market will soon be crowded with dealer-installers from traditional industries such as security service providers, as well as new entrants such as broadband, wireless and utilities service providers, so finding the right partnerships, business models and pricing is key to success.

About Berg Insight
Berg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91
Twitter: www.twitter.com/berginsight

Junifer Systems, the global provider of leading back office solutions for the utility industry, has been selected after a competitive tendering process to provide its flagship Utility CIS to E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business.

Junifer Systems’ Utility CIS is a modular end-to-end customer information and billing system designed specifically to support the unique challenges encountered by both legacy utility systems and the new requirements resulting from industry wide „Smart Meter‟ rollout programmes. The system has the capability to process „Smart Meter‟ consumption records as soon as they are presented to the system. The Junifer Utility CIS platform enables the Utility to offer innovative products, provide its customers with a better understanding of their energy consumption and ultimately help to reduce their carbon footprint.
The Junifer Systems Utility CIS implementation at E.ON will consolidate multiple systems, automate existing manual processes, provide an integrated accounts receivables and collections capability and provide extensive management reports.

Paul FitzGerald, Sales & Marketing Director for Junifer Systems said: “Our scaleable, Utility CIS platform will receive information from E.ON’s smart meters on a daily basis and process the data immediately – this will provide E.ON customer care staff with a single and timely view of all information related to their customers. We are delighted that E.ON recognised the added value that could be accrued through use of the Junifer Utility CIS platform.”

Jeremy Bungey, Head of Community Energy in E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business, said: “What impressed us most about Junifer Systems was that their software is developed specifically to meet the dynamic needs of the utility industry. Junifer’s Utility CIS was very user friendly and from the first live demonstration we could see exactly how it would work within our business. Our customer services team envisages real benefits from the system’s data collection, billing, CRM and ticketing capabilities.”
E.ON’s Sustainable Energy business will be using Junifer’s Utility CIS to manage the delivery of its many large-scale decentralised energy projects across new build sites such as Maple Quay and Dalston Square in East London.

Decentralised energy is produced close to where it will be used, reducing transmission losses and lowering carbon emissions. Long term, it can offer competitive, stable pricing. For house builders, decentralised energy is the cost-effective means of achieving the mandatory Code for Sustainable Homes targets.

About Junifer Systems
Headquartered in London, Junifer Systems provides complete Customer Information Systems (CIS) to the utility industry, specialising in billing systems for Smart Meter deployments. For more details please visit www.junifersystems.com

Media Contact:
Lindsay Spencer
Tria Nomina
T: +44 (0) 870 850 2157
E: lindsay.spencer@trianomina.com

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of fleet management systems deployed in commercial vehicle fleets in North America was 2.1 million in Q4-2010. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.6 percent, this number is expected to reach 3.8 million by 2015. In Latin America, the number of installed fleet management systems is expected to increase from 0.9 million in Q4-2010, growing at a CAGR of 20.6 percent to reach 2.3 million in 2015. Fleet management vendors such as Qualcomm, XATA and PeopleNet remain largely focused on the high-end trucking segment. Non-trucking segments such as delivery, utility and service are addressed by another group of vendors including FleetMatics, Networkfleet and Wireless Matrix. The high-end vendors tend to offer customized solutions via a consultative sales process, whereas others adopt indirect sales models based on distributors, solution sellers and integrators, and offer more standardized solutions.

The report cites customer awareness of the benefits of telematics as the main driver behind growth. “Today managers in North America generally know that fleet management technology can help their businesses reduce costs and improve efficiency. In Latin America, an educational process may however be needed in order to increase the awareness among prospective users about the benefits that fleet management solutions bring beyond mere security related features”, said Rickard Andersson, Telecom Analyst, Berg Insight.

New regulations related to road transport activities also have a major impact on the market environment. The recently implemented CSA safety scoring system in the US to identify high-risk motor carriers requiring interventions is one example. The hours-of-service regulations are further being revised and a mandate to use electronic on-board recorders to log working hours for truckers is likely to come in place starting in 2012 for new vehicles to eventually include all commercial vehicles. In Brazil, the mandated installation of tracking units in all new vehicles is also an important influencer of the development in this region.

About Berg InsightBerg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global shipments of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets increased almost 97 percent in 2010 to 295 million units. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.8 percent, shipments are forecasted to reach 940 million units in 2015. The attach rates for wireless connectivity technologies in handsets including GPS, Bluetooth and WLAN are increasing steadily as the adoption of smartphones accelerates. These connectivity technologies are already a standard feature on high-end smartphones. Adoption of GPS and WLAN will also increase rapidly in the medium- and low-end smartphone segments.

The attach rate for WLAN connectivity in handsets reached 20 percent in 2010. Berg Insight forecasts shipments of WLAN-enabled handsets to reach 900 million in 2015. “There are numerous compelling use cases for WLAN in mobile phones, ranging from offloading data traffic from increasingly congested mobile networks to media synchronisation and hybrid navigation services”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “Hybrid navigation technologies are necessary to enable reliable positioning indoors. New multi-mode GPS receivers that also support the Russian GLONASS satellite system are already available in handsets. When using the two systems in combination, more visible satellites will increase the chance to receive sufficiently strong signals to get a fix in urban canyons”. He adds that further performance increases will come from hybrid location technologies that fuse signal measurements from multiple satellite systems, cellular networks and WLAN, together with data from various forms of sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and altimeters.

Starting in the second half of 2011, more handsets supporting the Near Field Communication (NFC) standard for short-range wireless point-to-point communication will also become available. When deployed in mobile phones, NFC can be used for countless applications such as information exchange, electronic ticketing and mobile payments. Shipments of NFC-enabled handsets are forecasted to increase from less than two million units in 2010 to 400 million units in 2015.

About Berg InsightBerg Insight offers premier business intelligence to the telecom industry. We produce concise reports providing key facts and strategic insights about pivotal developments in our focus areas. Our vision is to be the most valuable source of intelligence for our customers.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91
http://www.berginsight.com
Follow Berg Insight on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/berginsight